


Trying Hard to Do What's Right

by awarrington



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy, First Time, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-18
Updated: 2010-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awarrington/pseuds/awarrington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his final year at the Academy, Jim meets some hippies and takes an illicit substance.  McCoy drags him off for a detox.  Revelations ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trying Hard to Do What's Right

Title: Trying Hard To Do What's Right  
Author: Amanda Warrington  
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy  
Rating: PG-13 for swearing, m/m kissing  
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or the characters, I just like to play with them sometimes.  
A/N: For LJ user cards_slash's 69 fic-exchange meme - her prompt to me was: "He's with the hippie in the park coming over the dark/just trying to get some of that little girl play" (This River is Wild by The Killers) Kirk, Bones.  Title comes from another line in the same song.  With more than a passing nod at the TOS episode Way To Eden. Unbeta'd - all mistakes are my own.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Wha’s up, Herbert?”

Bones had managed to half-walk, half-drag Jim a short distance away from the people he’d been sitting with on the grass in the park.  There were perhaps twenty of them in a loose circle, some playing instruments and drums, others chanting.  Jim’s eyes were blown, Bones guessed, from some drug he’d taken.

“Herbert?  Jim what have you been taking, dammit?”

Jim looked back at the group of hippies, grinned and swayed.  “Nuthin’ Bones.  Nuthin’ for you to worry about.  Now I’m goin’ back to Irina.”  He pointed at the group.  “She’s the dark-haired cutie next to that bald guy.”

“You’re not going back there, you’re coming with me, kid.”

Jim bent down, scooped up a pile of autumn leaves and from above Bones’ head, dropped them on him with a grin.

“Will you fucking quit that, asshole.”  Bones batted away a leaf that had got stuck in his hair, rapidly losing what little patience he had.  “Come back with me, Jim.  I want to examine you to find out what mind-altering chemicals you’ve taken and get them out of your system before anyone in Starfleet finds out.”

Jim frowned.  “You don’t reach.  Irina says she loves me and we’ll find someone for you, too.” He began to tug on Bones’ hand.  “Come and get some lovin’, Bones.”

“Loving?” he asked incredulously.  It took a few more seconds to realize that Jim was still holding his hand and yanked it away.  “I don’t need loving,” he scowled.

Jim’s face took on a puzzled expression.  “Sure you do, Bones.  Everyone needs love.”

“Right.”  He didn’t know what else to say to that.

“Right,” Jim agreed leaning forward and kissed him chastely on the mouth.

Bones pulled back as if burned.  “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Loving you,” Jim smiled.  There was a peaceful quality to his face that Bones steadfastly ignored.

“You’re off your goddamn head.”  Kissing Jim might have been something Bones fantasized about, but that was a whole different ballgame to actually doing it, especially while his friend was under the influence of some drug.

Jim looked back towards Irina.  “I just want some love,” he said simply.

The words hit Bones in a way he didn’t care to examine too closely.  He knew Jim was still feeling raw after his mother had responded the previous day to his invitation to his graduation in six months.  She’d written to say she was ‘unable to attend due to her Starfleet duties’.  _Six months notice and she couldn’t rearrange her fucking schedule to see her son finally make a success of himself._  Not that Jim had outwardly shown any sign of being upset, but Bones had known him long enough to know he’d been hurt.

Bones’ mouth still tingled where Jim’s lips had contacted.  “Are you going to come voluntarily or am I going to have to bodily drag you?”

Jim looked back to the group and then to Bones.  “Wait a minute,” he said and unsteadily approached the woman he’d pointed out earlier.  “I reach you Irina, but Herbert needs me more than you do.”

Irina turned to look at Bones and nodded.  Then several of the group made a sign with their hands, fingers pressed together to form the apex of a triangle, their thumbs the base.  “Go in peace and love, brother,” one of them said.

“What’s with the fucking ‘Herbert’ shit?  Stop calling me that,” Bones said when Jim had rejoined him, feeling like it was some kind of judgment he didn’t care for.

Jim looked dreamily into his eyes and with a smile, shook his head but didn’t answer.

Ignoring the path, Bones led them across the grass in the most direct route to the park gate where he could hail an aircab back to the Academy.  It quickly became clear Jim wasn’t going to be able to walk any distance unaided, his body apparently having become boneless.  As they walked through a small copse, Bones caught sight  of the exit to the park through the trees.  With a sigh, he put his arm around Jim’s waist to try to hold him up for the last two hundred meters.  But instead of continuing forward, Jim pivoted within the circle of his arm and pulling Bones to him, kissed him again.  Only this one wasn’t quite so chaste.

Bones began to kiss him back before he guiltily pulled away, feeling utter disgust at his weakness.  “You don’t know what you’re doing with this fucking drug raging in your system,” he growled, more angry at himself than at Jim.  “Next time you pull that stunt, I’m going to deck you.”

“Just tryin’ to love you, Bones,” Jim said, pouting.

_I don’t need that kind of love_,  were the words on his lips, but he didn’t say them because he knew it wasn’t true.  Instead he gruffly took Jim by the waist again and hauled him out of the park.

-=-=-

Bones was thankful the Medical Center was so quiet for a Sunday afternoon and no-one paid much attention to him hauling Jim into a private treatment room.

Jim sat slumped in a chair while Bones ran a tricorder over him, then linking into the main system fed in the results.  He got his answer in seconds.

“Rigellian Bombs.  For fuck’s sake, Jim, they’re illegal.  Do you want to get your ass kicked out of the ‘Fleet?”

Jim smiled at him.  “You can fix me up, Bones.”

It took the doctor an hour to clean Jim’s system.  Once done, he got off the biobed and Bones found himself the subject of Jim’s intense blue gaze.

“You kissed me back, Bones.”

Shitshitshit.  He’d been hoping Jim had forgotten about it in his drug-induced stupor.

Jim tilted his head to one side.  “_Are _ you in need of some loving?” he asked, moving closer, too close.

“Back off, Jim,” he warned.  He knew what Jim was offering.  But he was happy with the way their friendship was and didn’t want to risk fucking it up with sex.

Jim stood his ground.  “You didn’t answer my question.”

Bones felt resentment and anger bubble up, a product of his own internal battle in which part of him wanted more, wanted the closeness and the intimacy, and the other part was afraid of it, of what it might cost him, what it might cost them both.

“No.  No, OK?,” he almost shouted.  “I don’t need a pity fuck from you.”

He could see his answer hit Jim hard.  Harder than it should have done and suddenly Bones wanted to beat himself up for his utter stupidity because too late, he remembered that the reason Rigellian Bombs were a banned drug was because of the ‘crash’ after; one that took some humans, especially those with bi-polar tendencies, right to the very depths.

“A pity fuck?” Jim said incredulously.  He could see unshed tears in Jim’s eyes.  “You’re closer to me than my own fucking family, Bones.  My _mother_,”  he said the words with bitter laugh, “obviously doesn’t give a shit about me.  You’ve taken better care of me in the last two years than anyone has in my entire fucking life.  Do you think, after all this time, what I feel for you is pity?”

The words hit home like an arrow to his heart and Bones was unable to breathe, unable to think, his world turned upside down.  Jim stood less than half a meter from him, his face flushed, his eyes too bright.

“Jim.”  He put his arms out to take hold of Jim’s shoulders, but aborted the action.  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”  Jim turned away.  “I don’t need your pity either.”

“It’s not pity, Jim.  It’s—”  The words stuck in his throat.  He couldn’t say it; not out loud.  “Jim,” he said again, tugging at his arm until they were facing each other again.  “_Jim_,”  he repeated and then he pulled him close and kissed him, pouring all his unarticulated feelings into it so that even though he couldn’t say the words, Jim would _know._  And Jim kissed him back with just as much fervor, just as much feeling.

They were two broken men, he knew, fucked up by their past, who had found solace in each other’s company.  Who was he really to deny what they could share together, or what they could be to one another?  Their future was uncertain – they’d chosen one of the most dangerous careers in the Federation – so living for today was all the more important.  They had enough to go on that they’d figure things out.

It was Bones who finally ended the kiss, pulling his head back just enough to look into Jim’s eyes and see the sadness gone.  The Medical Center wasn’t the place for this.  “Your place or mine?”

Jim gave him an ear-splitting smile and he felt a lump in his chest.  “Yours Herbert, since you’re the one with a single room.”

Bones clipped him upside his head.  “I said don’t call me that.”

Jim grinned and Bones knew it wasn’t the last he’d heard of it.

They exited the building, close enough together that their shoulders and arms bumped occasionally, walking along the path to their future.

END

 

Feedback is always welcome, either here, or [on my LJ page where this story was originally posted.](http://awarrington.livejournal.com/2326.html)


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